J.D. Hansel

Sci-Fi

Divergent Review

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MINOR SPOILERS

                It is easy for me to see why critics hated this film: it seems to ride on the success of other films in its genre without supplying sufficient creativity to rise above its clichés.  To make matters worse, I could write a 20-page paper on the baffling inanity of the structure of this world – not just in terms of its government, but also the natural laws and human behaviors, such as the reluctance of the vast majority of the courageous Dauntless (even those raised in the faction) to jump into the hole before Tris.  If the government of this world had been designed by an elite, aristocratic administration of some sort, as seen in The Hunger Games, it would be obvious why such a pathetic social structure would be contrived.  In this film, however, there is no one who benefits from the system; everyone is trapped in one nation, under no one, divided, with liberty and justice for none.  While this flick may have pulled in significant box office money by simply being fascinating, it is fatally flawed in that, much like other films that present fascinating new worlds, this one struggles to have any reality to it as soon as the viewer gives any aspect of it one moment of thought.  I cannot help but yell at the people of the world in the screen for tolerating – nay – encouraging this kind of foolishness for so long.

The problem with having an unbelievable world (not necessarily in the sense that it contains elements of fantasy, but in the sense that its people do not respond to their circumstances in a way that real human beings would) is that the characters inevitably must behave in non-relatable ways in order to make the story function, as noted in the example of the hole above.  For another example, since bravery does not necessarily entail resourcefulness, several people in Dauntless should have been able to fight their hallucinogenic fears by challenging their reality in the way Tris did, all without being considered Divergent.  The issues go on and on, but at the heart of the picture are major flaws in the division of the factions:

  • The difference between the Factionless and the Divergents is unclear, as both exemplify those who do not fit into any particular group;
  • Dauntless is fundamentally idiotic because, when bravery is the only virtue, there is no place for ethics;
  • Both Abnegation and Amity are focused on caring and well-being, so separating them into two factions seems redundant – especially since those who grow the food are best fit to feed the Factionless;
  • Abnegation, Amity, and Candor are all focused on ethics, which is unnecessary because – while this may be a very counter-intuitive or controversial thing for me to propose – ethics lies in the domain of reason, and Erudite should naturally be the most ethical of all;
  • Within Erudite it is only logical that sub-factions would appear, as intellects are generally free-thinkers who will reach separate conclusions on the best way to live;
  • This whole franchise should clearly be about a battle between Erudite and Dauntless, but Erudite should be the heroes, not Dauntless, since Erudite could actually have virtues (other than bravery) to keep them ethical.

This list could be far more detailed, but I think I have made my point.  For these reasons, it seems to me that the author started with dramatic scenes in which the characters (whom she’d meant to fully develop before it slipped her mind) confronted their darkest fears, and then the rest of the book was filled in with redressed portions of The Hunger Games and The Giver.

Yet somehow, in spite of the nonsensical details, I still enjoyed the film.  I actually started watching Divergent many months ago, but had to stop because the disc was scratched, so it was skipping over important parts of the film.  Remarkably, even having seen most of the movie already, I had a good time re-watching all of it.  I truly believe that a movie can get away with making little or no sense at all so long as the audience is invested in the characters and the plot.  After all, the Harry Potter franchise is widely praised as brilliant, even by critics, but Cinema Sins has amply displayed its lunacy on a number of occasions (for example, anyone who had a small amount of liquid luck could drink it while searching for the “extremely rare” ingredients required to produce liquid luck, and then he/she could have an infinitely growing supply, resulting in a perpetual monopoly on the stuff).

In all fairness, the character of Tris is rather uninteresting in a way, and I suspect it’s because she is a little too relatable to the average teen and is devoid of distinct characteristics from other heroines in the genre.  However, she is always given dramatic decisions to make and always makes a surprising choice, which keeps the viewer watching her every move and captivated by her unique mind.  The important lesson to be learned here is one that dates back to The Wizard of Oz: a film is not judged by how close it comes to perfection, but by how its characters, ideas, and stories captivate the audience in spite of the imperfections.  When I think about Divergent this way, it is clear to me that I was constantly aware of the movie’s flaws – which admittedly was probably because I was watching much of it for a second time – but I was too genuinely amused by what the characters were experiencing to let that stop me from enjoying myself.

74 Divergent

Lucy Review

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This film seems to be, at least to some extent, emulating 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I’ll give it the same criticism I’d give to Kubrick: “If you’re going to contribute to the discussion of human evolution, all I ask is that you please use complete sentences.”  Notice how that last sentence of mine was quite full, risking being overcrowded, but at least it got its whole point across in the best way possible.  That is what I like.  I like it when ideas are fully explicated, and it should show that the writer has cooked up some good food for thought, rather than just gesturing in the general direction of a kitchen saying, “make your own.”  Don’t get me wrong – I’m perfectly capable of coming up with my own ideas, and inventing stories to describe them, but when a filmmaker concocts an idea only halfway with the intention of leaving the explaining to me, I get stuck with all of the tedious labor. This just makes the creator seem lazy.  The key problem with Lucy is that it serves as a great prompt for someone to fully explicate its ideas in a more creative and interesting story, but a truly great film would have a hypothesis at its core, not a prompt.

Now I suppose I must explain what I mean when I say a prompt or a hypothesis.  A prompt (according to my mental movie dictionary) says, “Here’s a thing that could happen.”  A hypothesis says, “If this happened, here are some of the implications and conflicts that could arise.” This is the difference between “What if a teenager got a time machine?” and “If a teenager got a time machine, what would happen if he accidentally kept his parents from falling in love?” I wonder if the old adage “show, don’t tell” has taught filmmakers to show ideas rather than exploring their implications.  The way that Lucy explores the idea of a person gaining access to 100% of the mind consists of the following: Dr. Exposition (Morgan Freeman) runs through a checklist of what would happen at a given percentage of access to the brain, in spite of the fact that he has no way of knowing this since it’s all guesswork, and then Lucy coincidentally displays that behavior at the exact same time. There are missed opportunities for good storytelling at every corner: the drama of her parents losing their daughter, the comedy of watching her clumsily try to use powers she hasn’t mastered, the sadness of the loss of her friendships, the confusion of figuring out where the powers came from, the arguments about what to do with the knowledge she has, the irony of a girl who flunked math suddenly being an expert, the heartbreak of her growing apart from her lover… okay, I got that last one from Her, but it would still work, if the writer had given her a decent boyfriend. Alas, the film is mostly interested in going through a laundry list of special effects, and the plots are secondary. Here’s the bizarre part: this movie held my interest.

I didn’t care all that much about Lucy as a character because the film puts a roadblock at any potential route to empathy.  At the beginning of the film, she’s clearly not the type of person anyone with half a brain would want to befriend, and we haven’t learned enough about her to empathize yet.  Then, she progressively becomes less and less human throughout the “story,” thus placing her in the mental category of “non-person,” and we humans have a hard time remembering to care about anything in that category.  To make plot all the more futile, conflict is practically non-existent since there is no appropriate adversary for an omnipotent goddess, and it’s a given that she will inevitably succeed unharmed.  My enjoyment of the film is relying almost entirely on my relationship with the director, who keeps tossing interesting ideas and visuals my way for me to enjoy.  Sometimes he gets so pretentious it’s laughable, but I must admit that I was pretty entertained on the whole, and the film even passed my Pause Test.  It tries to substitute drama with intensity, and it kind of pulls off this trick by being concise.

So, in the end, it may not be a brilliant masterpiece, but it keeps the viewer curious about what’s coming next, and it satisfies the curiosity adequately, making for a good cinematic experience.

67 Lucy

Tomorrowland Review

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When approximately 22 minutes had passed, the critics checked out. The first trailer for the film, which screamed with unwarranted mediocrity, instantly brewed a batch of immense apathy in the moviegoers’ heads.  The marketing was dreadful, so the critics were eagerly awaiting the chance to convict the movie of being dreadful as well.  They got their chance about 22 minutes in, when the film reaches the pinnacle of preachy.  All of the teachers tell the high school students that doom is inevitable – the end is near – and while our optimistic protagonist raises her hand to argue, they all choose to ignore her.  When she finally is given the chance to speak, she asks the obvious question, “Can we fix it?”  The teacher is stumped by the question, because apparently everyone in this movie lives in a world where no one has bothered to ask what we can do to make the world better.

But that’s not where the story really starts.  Let’s start earlier, at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Yes, the film starts there, at what was perhaps the biggest display of optimism about the future in history. The movie starts (as more Disney films should) by getting us excited about the movie we’re starting to watch, and giving us a dose of nostalgia while playing great Sherman Brothers music is a really good way to do that.  This is where audio-animatronics were revealed to the public, most notably in the attraction “It’s a Small World,” which is where audio-animatronic children can transport people to another dimension.  … No, really, that’s the ride’s purpose according to this movie. It takes them to a dimension where cliché visions of the future are re-hashed with gray CGI, creating a world of half-hearted semi-wonder, with a side of Diet Whimsy.  However, when viewed through the eyes of the child we’re following, Frank, there is some wonder to be found in it.  Fortunately, there are a few clever details and touches that seem rather original – especially the magic floating swimming pools – which make the clichés far more bearable than one would expect from just watching the trailer.

This, however, is not the focus of the film.  The focus of the film is Hugh Laurie’s speech at the end. The entirety of the film builds up to the moment when he finally explains what has been going on this whole time.  Essentially, visions of what will happen at the end of the world have been subtly broadcast directly into the minds of the people of earth.  This should obviously be a wake-up call to get to work on fixing the problem, but instead, humans acted like humans.  They ate it up, they yelled and fussed and complained about it, they preached that the end was near, and in the end, it became an excuse.  It became an excuse to act like they cared about what was important, while in reality they used what could have been a great chance to do some good as a chance to be lazy.

The cleverness of the film is that the whole movie builds up to the unveiling of a self-fulfilling prophecy machine (arguably a sci-fi equivalent to American cable news), and ultimately humankind is more to blame for the end of the world than any villain.  The problem with the film is in the delivery of this great concept. The use of real people, places, and events creates the sense that Tomorrowland is trying to depict the real world somewhat accurately.  This becomes a problem nine minutes in when “It’s a Small World” has a secret built-in tunnel to another dimension, at which point the suspension of disbelief is gone since not even Disney could pull of such a feat in the 1960s.  However, this part of the movie was not absurdist enough to effectively communicate to the audience the message they needed to hear: “THIS IS NOT YOUR WORLD; it’s a silly caricature of it.”

But Disney wouldn’t be brave enough to say that, would they?  Naturally, they think they must make the audience believe that it is the world we’re living in so that we’re shocked.  Disney seems to think we won’t be invested in the film if what’s on screen is too surrealistic.  Therein lies the irony – the movie itself becomes the machine it antagonizes by saying, “This is reality and it stinks,” rather than saying, “This could be reality.”  (As if that isn’t bad enough, it commits an even worse crime by saying that our reality includes certain special people who inevitably improve the world.  So if I, the viewer, don’t think I’m one of those people, why would I feel motivated to make the world a better place?)  This could have been avoided had the film been an absurdist comedy, creating a world with obviously stupid caricatures of mankind, which takes away the preachy tone, while simultaneously allowing the filmmakers to scream to the world, “DON’T YOU DARE LET YOUR WORLD BE ANYTHING LIKE THIS LUDICROUS ONE.”

To be fair, there are other interesting elements of the film to discuss as well, such as the clever concept of a society where all the world’s geniuses got together in another dimension.  In terms of characters, I find it hard to believe that the lead actress is a genius, but I suppose she at least does a decent job at making the character likable.  Frank’s a pretty good character on the whole, and Hugh Laurie does a nice job with his part too, but none of them are as charming or impressive as Raffey Cassidy, who plays the little girl named “Athena.”  She’s kind of amazing, and I really like this character, but I spent half the movie waiting for the writers to kill her off since I could tell they’d do it eventually.  Her death was probably the most predictable part of the story though, as most of the film kept me wondering what was going to happen next.  The movie surprisingly handles exposition well using the old trick of making the audience want answers, and then providing them, rather than explaining to the audience what we haven’t asked to have explained.  Still, part of why the story took interesting and surprising turns that kept me wanting answers is the lack of any logic in the story whatsoever.  I was constantly finding things that the robotic characters, being computers at heart, should have handled much more logically, so I felt more like I was watching a to-be-CinemaSins than a Disney classic – another issue that could have been dodged with a tongue-in-cheek approach.

Still, at the heart of the film is its message, and while the message seems straightforward, I don’t think the critics and I agree on what the message is.  The message I choose to take from the film is that I need to get off my butt, roll up my sleeves, and get to work on making the world a better place, but I suspect that that resonated with me since I’ve already felt that way for so long.  For the average viewer, I fear that this may not have been received the same way.  There is always a danger in an optimistic message as such messages tend to ignore reality and substitute it with the way they’d like to see the world.  This movie is, to some degree, guilty of ignoring reality, which does bother me.  It does, however, use clever ideas, a fun story, and interesting characters to give the world the slap in the face it needs and say, “You have no excuse now – go get to work and make the world better.”

58 Tomorrowland

Mad Max: Fury Road Review

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Okay, let’s do something weird.  Let’s compare Mad Max: Fury Road to Avengers: Age of Ultron.  I think this is an interesting comparison since they’re both sequels in big action movie franchises that happen to be out in theaters at the same time right now. They both have large fan bases since their characters have been around for many decades.  What makes this comparison especially interesting is that they both have simple, largely cliché storylines that we are all familiar with, but everyone seems to be mostly okay with this since a strong, unique story is not the focus of either film.

As I noted in my review of the Avengers sequel, Age of Ultron’s story seems to be an excuse for the characters to play off of one another, and that is the story’s only purpose.  The story is not meant to surprise and wow, but there is the obligatory surprise death, as well as some unique twists and turns in the story to make it more interesting.  Fury Road is fascinating since the story is an excuse to do some crazy action sequences.  The story is simply about getting from point A to point B, then back to point A.  Again, there are some surprises and unique touches, and this film does go out of its way to add several clever little details that make its post-apocalyptic world absolutely ingenious.

That being said, there is a serious problem in this focusing choice.  As I have said before, you can say that film is a visual medium, but the medium is really about telling stories.  At the heart of a story are its characters, so it follows that an old, cliché story can be made new and interesting just by having strong characters driving the story, as seen in Age of Ultron.  (It is incredibly important that the audience is invested in the characters in order for this to work, and the investment must not be exclusively from circumstances, or else the empathy may run out when the circumstances change as the story turns.)  So, there is danger to putting characters over story, but it can be done well, which I cannot say for putting action and visuals over both story and characters.  This focus puts the technical aspects involved in achieving investment in the characters and story over the investment itself, which is rather silly.

In regards to very visual-oriented films, I have three main criticisms, all of which can be avoided if a visual film is very careful. First of all, visual storytelling is very desirable only if the story is worth telling in the first place.  Secondly, there’s an old saying that reminds me of the place of visuals in film: “Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.”  What concerns me whenever I hear someone say that film is a visual medium is that they may get the impression that film is about the visuals, even though visuals are merely film’s means of expression, which I know because of the meaning of the concept of communication itself. Third, what is the purpose of a beautiful window that looks out to nothing but a brick wall?

The question that must now be asked, as I have been asking myself that since I saw the first ten minutes of the film, is this: is Mad Max guilty of the pitfalls mentioned above? Well, addressing the first crime, the story may very well be worth telling, but it has actually been told before. The plot can basically be summarized as follows: a girl escapes her dreary civilization and goes on a journey with some friends and new acquaintances to get to a beautiful green place where their dreams can come true, only to go right back home to where she started in the first place.  That is the plot to The Wizard of Oz.  Oz also had a brilliant visual style, but people remember the characters, and what the characters said, far more than the visual style, which I don’t think could ever be said for a film like Mad Max.  In regards to the second and third criticisms, the point of the film, from what I can tell, was to make a good-looking action movie, and everything else was secondary. So, yes, it is very guilty.

I suppose that means I should hate this movie, but I don’t. Throughout the movie, I was constantly experiencing overwhelming admiration, which is a credit to the film.  That being said, what I wanted to experience was not only admiration, but entertainment, and that was lacking because of the criticisms explained above.  Compare this to Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors, which is visually excellent, but the visuals are always serving to express the mood of the piece, the context of the story, the emotions of the characters, the theme of the music, and other elements that make the story work better.  In Mad Max, I see the visuals serving to create an interesting and visually amazing context for the story, but the story still seems to be lacking. Part of this is due to the characters.

Many of the characters are just fine, but there were few who really made me care about whether they lived or died.  The titular character, Max, was not one of the few. As noted in the Walker brothers’ fantastic review of this film, Max is really more of an observer than anything else, and he could essentially be played by anyone.  By the end of the movie, viewers should ask themselves, “What do I really remember about Max that makes him unique?”  The answer is probably, “very little,” which is unfortunate. The real protagonist in the film, Furiosa, is a bit more interesting, but not by all that much.  The best scene in the movie, however, is a short scene in which the film actually takes a breather (thank heavens) and allows for a nice conversation between Nux and Capable, which made me finally CARE about some of the characters.

My final point, which I once again borrow from the Walker brothers’ review, is that this movie is a great experiment.  Much like with Pulp Fiction, I like it a lot as an experiment or project, but I have a hard time calling it a movie.  This is so vastly different from my schema of movies (or at least good movies) since I have always seen the movie theater as a temple built to glorify great storytelling, and I do not see Mad Max as such.  I do see Mad Max: Fury Road as being great art, and a groundbreaking achievement in cinema.  I admire and respect what it brings to the table for moviegoers and filmmakers, and I hope it will lead to many great action movies in the future, which is why I recommend that fans of film see it.  (Not to mention, everyone must see the guy with the fiery guitar, who adds a lot to the already impressive soundtrack.)  However, I will continue to criticize the film harshly because I stand by my strong ideology that people do not go into a movie theater to watch a movie, but rather to experience a story.

56 Mad Max Fury Road

Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World Review

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(MINOR SPOILERS)

When I first saw the trailer for this movie years ago, I thought it was a remake or reboot of some sort.  I really couldn’t figure out how Spy Kids could be remade since it is so unique, or why it should be since I’ve always found it kind of stupid.  I think I found it stupid because I saw it as a movie, or movie franchise rather, as one that used a bizarre, off-putting, artsy style to make up for a lack of quality.  Over the past month or so though, I have been thinking that the bizarre, off-putting, artsy style had just been keeping me from seeing all the quality that’s there.

This is a weird movie series.  Maybe the weirdest I’ve ever seen.  It has a ridiculous story running throughout based on a ridiculous concept; it has a lot of heart and messages about family balanced with crude and edgy humor and images far too freaky for kids; it takes place in a nonsensical world filled with nonsensical characters, but doesn’t quite feel cartoony enough or satirical enough to pull it off; it’s a special effects film series with loads of CG, but it looks far too cheap be believable, and yet not silly enough to be funny; continuity is out of the question since the storyline throughout the series makes hardly any sense and the editing is as sloppy as that of a college project.  So why the heck do I enjoy these movies so much?

I enjoy the Spy Kids series because I enjoy a challenge, and I see the films as a challenge.  I find the movies to be kind of ugly, with strange shots, lousy effects, and poor editing, but I understand that this is a stylistic choice.  I think Rodriguez could have made these films properly if he wanted to, but he felt like making them weird, so he did.  Heck, it’s a weird concept – a combination of the spy genre and the kids’ movie genre – so why not make a weird world for it?  What this ultimately does is challenge the moviegoer to appreciate the more important things in the movie than technical correctness and beautiful shots.  The films have great characters, good dialogue, interesting stories/conflicts, effective surprises, strong themes, and clever details out the wazoo.  So, I was hoping the fourth film would hold up to the standards set by its predecessors.

Thankfully, it’s a good movie.  The plot has more holes than there are Fooglies, but the challenge of the movie series is to choose not to care about that stuff.  What matters is that the characters are likable, the story is interesting, the angle is original, the villain is fascinating, and the twists are pretty darn good.  Oh, and did I mention that Carmen and Juni come back to make it an epic nostalgia fest?!  I was still thinking it might be a remake until I saw Carmen, and when I saw her, I totally freaked out.  My excitement continued as I saw all the old spy gear from the previous films, and the feels were just too strong for me to take.

Yeah, it makes no sense and looks kinda crappy, but it makes me feel like a kid again, so who Flooping cares?!

45 Spy Kids 4

Back to the Future Part III Review

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I love the Back to the Future series, and I recognize that this is the finale that brings everything to completion, but I think it is probably the weakest of the three.  Still, it’s a chance to see Doc and Marty on the screen again, and they are still as enjoyable as ever, so I love it.  It’s fun, funny, and, as usual with the BttF franchise, keeps the audience in suspense and wonder.  (Honestly, the only reason it doesn’t get an extra half a star is that I wish it were as good as the first movie in the series, which may be a little too much to ask of a sequel that a studio demanded.)  It unfortunately does not have as many beautiful shots as the first two, but it still has a neat look and feel.  I like getting to see the ancestors of the characters, and the things and people that shaped the town.  The writing is absolutely brilliant, as one would expect, but it does leave me with one question: how could the future not be influenced at all by the passengers on the train not making it to their destination?

42 Back to the Future Part III